The 2014 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting of Physiology and Medicine

– For the first time in its 64-year history, a prestigious, invitation-only meeting of young scientists and Nobel Laureates is made up of
more women than men. One of this year’s motto is to promote Women as scientists and CEOs: “The future belongs to Women Scientists and CEOs”. That’s good! Perhaps we can do half and half. Meanwhile, I’m happy to be one of the enrolled males!

– Globally, we scored worse than a group of chimpanzees from a Swedish zoo when asked to answer to a brief pop quiz that Prof Rosling administered to all of us during the opening ceremony on Sunday. Luckily, we were in line with the average of the US, UK, and Sweden population. Including a population of academic staff. The reason: we are too influenced by preconceived ideas, not valid anymore. Anyway, chimpanzees random selection was definitely better than us.

This made me think about our limits.

The main obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance: it’s the illusion of knowledge.

So true!

What can we do about it? To continue to study and improve. I think it’s the only way. But, most importantly, to study without preconceived ideas about the world.

To know the future, we firstly have to know the present.

That’s good. Now I am more confident that to worry about the future is not the first thing to do. Before that, I should learn a lot of things I still don’t know about the present.